CICA to cooperate with SAARC, SCO

New Delhi, Nov 18: India has offered to be a co-coordinator, along with South Korea and Azerbaijan, for implementation of CICA Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) in the fields of energy security and development of secure and effective systems of transportation corridors.

This was decided at the Senior Officials Committee (SOC) meeting held in Almaty.

Kazakhstan's Deputy Foreign Minister Nurlan Yermekbayev today said the SOC meeting had also decided that majority of events under the CICA auspices would be held outside Kazakhstan--in New Delhi (Special Working Groups/Senior Officials Committee meetings), Tehran, Ankara, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Kyrgyz Republic (expert meetings) and Seoul.

''The activities within the CICA framework will simultaneously be carried out on several fronts,'' he said.

The Minister said the CICA, currently having 18 members including India, had decided to open up to all countries and was ready for cooperation with other regional organisations.

The Almaty Conference decided to establish relationship with SAARC, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Community (EuroAsEC) and the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO).

For strengthening cooperation among Asian inter-State organisations, the CICA SOC had decided to hold an international conference under the aegis of CICA with participation of all the Asian regional and sub-regional structures and establish dialogue on the ''inter-parliamentary track'' among the CICA member states, the Minister disclosed.

Mr Yermekbayev said the leaders of CICA member States recognised that in the increasingly inter-connected and inter-dependent world, CBMs in socio-economic dimensions were as important as in the politico-military dimensions. The CICA Catalogue laid down five dimensions for realisation of the CBMs--military-political, fight against new challenges and threats, economic, environmental and humanitarian.

''In Asia, there is an extensive potential for joint activity in such spheres as trade, economy, protection of the environment, disaster management, transport, power, a cultural exchange, dialogue between civilisations and counteraction to new threats and challenges,'' the Minister said.

According to Mr Yermekbayev, the process of realisation of CBMs in the four socio-economic dimensions had already commenced.

Seven member States -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Russia, Tajikistan and Turkey -- had volunteered to act as coordinating countries for certain projects for realisation of CBMs in the areas of human dimensions, new challenges and threats, development of secure and effective systems of transportation corridors, drug trafficking, national disaster management, information technology, energy security cooperation, economic cooperation and tourism, the Minister added.

UNI